Nvidia has stopped selling its GeForce RTX 30-series Founders Edition graphics cards in its official stores both in the U.S. and in Europe, as reported by Cowcotland. The company continues to offer third-party GeForce RTX 30-series products in its own online store (these are among the best graphics cards one can buy today), but it is impossible to get a previous-generation Founders Edition add-in-board, at least for now.
At the time of publishing, official Nvidia Stores in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, and Spain no longer list any GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, 3070, 3070 Ti, 3080, 3090, or 3090 Ti Founders Edition graphics cards. Meanwhile, the online stores continue to list various Ampere architecture-based offerings from Nvidia's partners, so getting a GeForce RTX 30-series product from an Nvidia partner is still possible. Furthermore, GeForce RTX 30-series Founders Edition products are still available from major retailers like Amazon, so these devices have not disappeared from the market overnight.
Nvidia is not exactly in a hurry with rolling out its Ada Lovelace-based GeForce RTX 40-series cards — the GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards offer good performance compared to competing offerings from AMD, and therefore Nvidia's partners can still sell them without offering massive discounts.
But the situation may be a tad different with Founders Edition products. Nvidia's Founders Edition graphics cards are built by a contract manufacturer under Nvidia's supervision. The company uses a production partner to strictly maintain the original design and bill-of-materials (BOM) throughout the card's life cycle. Other GPU makers tend to slightly alter BOM to manage their costs and/or increase their profitability, but maintaining the BOM allows Nvidia to offer consistent quality to the end user and also simplifies the life of PC makers who do not need to re-run their quality and compatibility sequences with every new BOM iteration.
But since Founders Edition graphics cards are positioned to address very specific audiences, Nvidia may not be inclined to build too many of these cards. Furthermore, at some point, it might decide to no longer offer GeForce RTX 30-series Founders Edition products in its store because it makes more sense to sell GeForce RTX 40-series Founders Edition devices instead.
In any case, getting a GeForce RTX 30-series Founders Edition graphics card from a major retailer is still possible. Yet, it remains to be seen whether it makes sense because Nvidia has already launched GeForce RTX 4090, 4080, and 4070 Ti products and is about to roll out its GeForce RTX 4070 GPU.
